How to Make Perfect Roast Chicken

   I feel like an ad from the 1950s..."She used to do it the wrong way, and then she discovered..." Pause while I put on my pinny.
   Once upon a time, I used to roast chickens whole. The results were alright, I suppose, but sometimes the breast meat was dryer than the thighs, and then there was all the bother of carving them and asking who wanted white meat and who liked a leg. I'm not sure when I made the switch but lately, I've been butterflying my birds, which means that they cook faster, and the results are considerably, impressively juicier. Another term for this is "spatchcocking," a word that evidently originated in Ireland.
   A very sharp knife would probably do the job but it's considerably easier if you use purpose-built poultry shears. Mine came from Ikea several years ago, and I use them for nothing else. Vegetarians, look away. This is going to be graphic. If you want it to be even more graphic, go to YouTube and watch the video.
    To do the deed, insert the poultry shears up the chicken's rear end and cut through, beside the backbone, right the way through to where the neck would be if it hadn't been chopped off. Then do the same the other side of the backbone. Now, with the chicken's skin side up,  take a heavy knife, and cut down the middle of the breastbone, part-way through, stem to stern. Finally, with a firm hand, flatten the chicken.

     The following is based on using a chicken weighing around 1.2 kg (a little over 2-1/2 pounds). Heavier chicken=longer cooking time. Obviously.

     Put your spatchcocked bird into a pan just large enough to accommodate it. Salt and pepper the bird,  and maybe smear its skin with olive oil. Don't go overboard with the oil. Usually, I also throw in some garlic cloves (peeled or unpeeled), and maybe squeeze a halved lemon over it. Then I whack it into an oven preheated to 175°C. Give it a glance after 30 or 40 minutes and, if it looks a little dry, spoon some of the pan juices over it. After one hour, it should be done, the skin golden-brown, taut and crispy, the meat cooked through. A knife stuck into the bird where the leg joins the body should slide cleanly through. If you're not sure, crank the heat up by 10 degrees and give it ten minutes more.

      Decant your lovely, gilded roast chicken on to a platter and cover it with a tea towel if, as we did this morning, you're off to a vide grenier, and want chicken for lunch.  Do not use plastic wrap. A hot chicken gives off steam and any condensation falls back on its skin and makes it soggy. We don't want that, do we. 

     You can eat it hot of course but, either way, this is simple, rustic food so don't faff around with fancy decorative touches. Just cut the chicken in four (another reason to buy poultry shears), and adorn it with parsley and a quartered lemon.

  
      Now, digest that while I get on to the next post, wherein I'll tell you some easy dishes to serve with the chicken.

The First Picnic of the Year

   By late March we were already eating lunch outdoors most days so logically it was time to take the food show on the road.

   Our lake, just a kilometre away, is almost deserted at this time of year so we knew that we could easily score a picnic table with view. We joined forces with a couple of friends, met up in the car park and spread out and shared the goodies.

   Tomatoes from the market and roquette, dandelion leaves and bittercress from the garden,

 A big Greek salad...

  A couple of hours later: the remains of a roast chicken, homemade bread, roasted red and yellow peppers (with plenty of garlic) and the last centimetres of the chilled rosé and vin rouge.

   Time to go home.

Eating locally...

     Here's a peek at last Friday's lunch, some of it sourced from the market we'd just been to in Lavelanet, some of it from our, and our neighbour's, garden. 

     Starting at 12 noon and going round the clock, the hunk of bread is off the half a couronne we bought. This is real gutsy peasant stuff, crusty, chewy, and meant to last a week. If we ever do have leftovers, they make terrific croutons All that arugula/rocket/roquette comes from the garden. It self-seeded itself to make a small forest that grows about two metres from where we were eating it. The more I cut it, the more it grows.  I love its pepperiness and often team it with walnuts, and a dressing of lemon juice and walnut oil. I picked those sweet little yellow cherry tomatoes, and the green one further down the garden. The red ones are from next-door. My neighbour has been away for a few weeks and gave me free run of her vegetable patch. 

     Finally, the protein element. We bought two roasted quail from the rotisserie van at the market. Still warm when we ate them, they only cost 2.50 euros each, and we nibbled every last little bit of meat off them. The rotisserie man also sells whole chickens, chicken legs, chicken thighs, roasted pork, big fat sausages, and potatoes that sit in a trough at the bottom of the rotisserie and catch all the juices that drip from the various meats.

     Finally, a pot of redcurrant relish made by a friend--and very delicious it is. Last, but not least, the little blue-handled spoon was made by our neighbour, David Hilton, maker of beautiful tableware. Go and have a browse around his on-line shop. http://www.davidhiltontableware.co.uk/
  

The Chicken Ferris Wheel

Pity I can't write a scratch 'n sniff post. You'll just have to imagine the unbelievably tantalizing smell of these fat farm chickens as they slowly rotate on this rotisserie outside a butcher's in Pamiers. 

   And off go a couple in paper bags for somebody's Sunday lunch.

Chicken and garlic

This dish doesn't have a name. It's too simple. All you do is put a whole chicken breast on the bone into a casserole and spritz lemon juice over it. It has to be on the bone and it has to still have its skin on it. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are an abomination that remind me of things sold in packets of ten at the drugstore.

    So, around your skin-covered, bone-supported chicken breast go unpeeled garlic cloves--as many as you like. Be lavish with these-- I used about ten for two of us and it wasn't enough. In with those go a couple of onions, chopped into large chunks and one and a half red peppers also chunked. Then all you do is drizzle olive oil over the vegetables and stick the dish in the oven at 350 degrees. Half an hour later, stir the veggies around and return the dish to the oven. Half an hour later, pull it out and bring to the table. Meanwhile, I'd also washed a large amount of spinach, and wilted it in olive oil (the olive oil consumption in this household is shameful). That and a baguette was supper and if you think that chunks of baguette wiped around the serving dish to sop up the chicken-y, onion-y  garlic-infused olive oil were absolute bliss, you're right. Also very good (food Nazis has better not read this) is a slice of crisp golden chicken skin carefully removed and wrapped around a chunk of soft unctuous red pepper. You can also pop the garlic cloves out of their "shells" and smear the paste all over the chicken. 

   This was enough for two but seems to me it would be easy to double or triple.

Opportunities at the market.

Markets in France offer scads more than fruit and veggies. A sample of what you could have bought if you'd joined us in Lavelanet this morning.

Small tractors and large mowers--you can always get those. I've never worked out how you're supposed to get them home. Do you ride them and join all the other agricultural vehicles we see around here?

Next, takeout food. Here's the rotisserie man skewering a number of chickens. He also sells, depending on his mood, ham, pork, rabbit and quail. The pan on the left holds paella which is sold by the portion with each portion containing precisely the same amount of chicken, prawns and squid.

Elsewhere you can buy churros--we're very close to Spain--or couscous because we have lots of North African people living locally. Pizzas, I almost forgot those with a wealth of different toppings. Chinese food--nems is French for spring roll. Mussels cooked in cream. Usually a daube smelling so good you could dive right into it. If you don't want to cook, this market makes it easy.

Moving along, you can outfit yourself and your family head to toe at the market (I hoped the bra man would be there so I could take a photo but he wasn't). Current French fashion moves down to market level remarkably quickly. Here's one of the shoe stalls. These are fairly granny-ish in style but elsewhere I could have bought cute wedge 40s style sandals and smart black boots--plastic so only 10 euros. The other bargain to be had today were black jeans and blousons for three euros each. 

Beside the shoe stall, you can see the first of the new broad beans. White and green asparagus is also showing up. No fruit as yet but there are still loads of local apples around.

A Long Lunch in the Third.

Third arrondissement that is. Coming here on the train, I read my way through Pudlo Paris, a book of reviews by Gilles Pudloski, restaurant critic for Le Point. I jotted down names of places that were close, interesting and affordable which is how we came to have lunch today at Au Fil des Saisons. Pudlowski describes it as "snug" and "rustic," seductive adjectives on a rainy day. 

Eventually we found it, or rather we assumed we must be in the right place even though this particular restaurant had no sign or street number. 

Inside were 36 seats. A couple of elderly ladies sat at one. A couple at another around the corner of a huge circular brick column which contained a staircase belonging to another building. At the table next to us was a solitary businessman. Another came later, obviously a regular--he's the one in the shot at the top of this post. 

The menu was written on a large blackboard carried from table to table. Dishes looked simple but inventive and that's how they turned out. Peter began with artichoke flan served with ham from the Vendée and a mesclun salad. I had confited gésiers (gizzards)--chicken rather than the usual duck ones we get in the south. They were mixed in with Puy lentils and lardons with--the unusual element--shavings of Parmesan cheese on the top. It sounded weird but worked. 

Main courses. Peter's was chicken breast with a sauce of ceps and cream, and a little potato flan. My slices of pork fillet were interspersed with smoked ham; the sauce had a whiff of truffle in it. The potatoes, sliced and cooked with cream, were in a small side dish but too rich to finish. As I write this, it's after 8 p.m. and I very much doubt we'll want anything for dinner beyond the baguette, cheese, grapes and wine we bought on the way back to the apartment.

A Chicken on the Table

A huge haul at Lavelanet market this morning. Here's a small chicken from the rotisserie man across from the church. As the birds revolve, their fat drips into a trough underneath which is packed with neat slices of potato. We bought both,  put together a quick salad and that, plus some more of the rapidly disappearing kilo of Brie was lunch.

At the market this morning, everyone seemed in a giving mood. When I bought three lettuces, the lady selling them threw in a handful of parsley (which often happens), then said, hmm, but these lettuces are small--and added a couple more. The butcher gave us a deal on the duck confit that we bought for dinner tonight (more friends have arrived from Vancouver). Finally, when Alma purchased a bottle of home-made sparkling apple juice, the grower who had made it looked over the rest of his stock and picked out a particularly nice pear for her.